ebb and flow
by nothernspaces
Summary: You lose your virginity to him next to the lake during the springtime, all awkward noises and stabbing pain and some pleasure as your tongues mash together / a study of Sirius Black's relationship with the opposite sex.
1. the bad beginning

You lose your virginity to him next to the lake during the springtime, all awkward noises and stabbing pain and some pleasure as your tongues mash together.

 _It had been building up for some time_ , you supposed, _whatever this thing was that happened between you._

It starts in Slughorn's potions class when he moves smoothly, like water, to take up the seat next to you and you vaguely register that James Potter has stolen your partner.

He smiles at you with a wicked grin and your heart practically stops because this is the boy who betrayed his family and ran off to live with the Potter's during the summer and hexes Slytherins between classes and he's devilish and tortured all at the same time (you'd seen how he would storm around the castle after he got a howler from his mother).

You try to smile back casually – but nothing you ever do is casual. You're a Ravenclaw; highly-strung and analytical. _Perhaps that's why you just can't let him go_ , your dorm mate theorizes one summer evening, _you feel like you have to work him out_.

There's no way to analyze him, none at all, and it both frustrates and entices you and leaves you wanting (needing) more.

So when he teases you about how fiercely you grind your scarab beetles, a searing blush creeps up from the collar of your blouse and you marvel at how ironic magic can be sometimes- you making a Wit-Sharpening Potion, when he has reduced you to a silly schoolgirl.

"You're muggleborn, aren't you?" he asks offhandedly, and for a moment you don't know how to reply.

"Well yes, but-"

There's an insane man's sparkle in his eye now, which matches his wild dark hair and the chaotic tug of the right corner of his mouth, when he says, "So you'll know all the best muggle bands, then?"

Your heart races now as you ramble about all the music you think he'd like. The Beatles (because everyone likes them) and Bowie (" _you remind me of him a bit_ ") and the Clash and Sex Pistols. If you didn't know any better you'd think he might be getting bored when you see his eyes go slightly misty but you continue on anyway because you don't know what else to do.

Sirius Black doesn't know much about muggles, which is funny, because he's only seventeen but he looks like he knows everything, and the chance to be a know-it-all appeals to your Ravenclaw sensibilities.

He turns his eyes back to you suddenly, as if he has just remembered you are speaking, and interrupts, "Do you wear those strange muggle trousers?"

"Erm…" You're not quite sure what he means.

"The blue ones that get wider at the bottom." He says impatiently.

"Oh, yes. Bell Bottoms." And you smile a little, because its sweet, in a sense, how naïve he is to everything muggle. Because you've seen pictures of his family in the _Daily Prophet_ , wearing stiff dragon hide, and you know, despite how kind they are, that the Potters live in a manor with twenty house elves. Strangely, the fact your father is a geography teacher and you vacation in a caravan at the Lake District makes you feel like you have the upper hand, just a little bit.

"I'd like to see you in them." He smirks and God you are melting because he's just so wickedly handsome and you'd like nothing more than to snog his face off.

When Slughorn comes to your station to test the potion, he declares that he's never had clearer thought in all his life.

* * *

You Sirius around the castle, sauntering like hell on wheels in every sense of the phrase, but he doesn't speak to you again except to ask you to pass the butter one morning when you and Bill Davies sit beside Remus Lupin and Lily Evans to discuss prefect duty.

Whenever you do see him though, your eyes catch with his and you can't deny there's something, even if it is just teenage chaos.

* * *

Your best friend somehow convinces you that he's going to ask you to go to Hogsmeade with him, but you tell her she's wrong because he hasn't even spoken to you for weeks and he's far too handsome so he'll probably ask that blonde Hufflepuff from sixth year he quite likes. You can also tell your dorm mate is just a little bit jealous that you are the recipient of his boyish glances and smirks (she's noticed too, so at least you're not mad).

* * *

You've almost forgotten about him when he suddenly appears at the end of the second-floor corridor you are patrolling.

(Although, how can you forget, when the whole school murmurs his names for days after elaborate pranks and duels and Quidditch matches, and he sweeps past you one afternoon smelling like cinnamon and grazes you on the hip just so, and you hear your cousin Doc say that he's going to buy a muggle motorbike and Sirius wants to help him fix it up).

He drawls your last name and it echoes through the stone corridor beautifully. It almost surprises you that he walks towards you so casually, considering curfew was an hour and a half ago, but then you remember he's Sirius Black and of course he wouldn't be in bed by curfew.

"Not going to give me detention, are you?" He asks with a cheeky grin, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets and making him look so open and inviting.

An awkward giggle escapes your mouth. "No. It's fine." You don't know where to put your own hands and so you just hold your wand in one and run the other through your hair (desperately hoping he doesn't notice you're not wearing any slap).

"Shame." He stops in front of you. "I was rather hoping you would."

There's something in his voice that means you can't tell if he's just teasing you with subtle innuendo, or if he half means it – he gets detention so much perhaps he's grown to like it. You wonder fleetingly if he still gets letters from his parents, or if seeing his brother in the castle upsets him, or he feels the weight of the war you all know is coming as heavy as you do (you still cry sometimes thinking of the time Evan Rosier called you a _mudblood_ in second year).

You don't know what to say so you just laugh again and maybe he was bored by that response because he keeps walking away down the corridor towards Gryffindor tower and doesn't look back.

* * *

You find yourself sitting in the library one afternoon with Remus Lupin (you aren't friends but you both take Advanced Transfiguration).

Most other students are outside enjoying the weather. From the arched windows to your left you can see the first years enjoying a snowball fight, some girls from Slytherin having an ice sculpture competition near Hagrid's Hut, and lots of couples ice-skating on the frozen lake (you wondered every winter what happened to the Giant Squid when his home froze over).

You couldn't concentrate on the textbook in front of you, but studied the lines and curves and textures of Remus Lupin's face. He had always been a quiet boy, with neatly cropped light brown hair and was always apologizing for everything he did, even if it was just in the way he spoke to you.

It was like he was always apologizing simply for existing.

Perhaps it was because of the glittering snow that blanketed the school grounds and made you feel like you were living inside a snow globe. Perhaps it was the great sorrow that filled you whenever you looked at Remus, _really_ looked at him. Perhaps it was because you were having your period. Perhaps it was all this, but for one spectacularly strange moment you seemed to realize for the first time in your life that magic was real and it didn't make life any easier for anyone (not for you, not for Remus Lupin, not for Sirius Black, not even for Evan Rosier).

This discovery made you feel stupidly courageous, and you suddenly uttered, without thinking, "Remus, you are beautiful."

The boy blushed a furious colour of fuchsia and lines formed between his bushy eyebrows, but he smiled gently all the same. _He must think I'm mad_.

You continue to gaze outside at the pure, clean whiteness of it all.

* * *

A few weeks later, you are laughing with your dorm mates in the Great Hall about something especially funny that had happened in Professor Binn's classroom the previous afternoon.

You snort into your pumpkin juice just as a barn owl drops a small brown envelope in front of you, dangerously close to your pot of yoghurt.

"Ooh, who's that from?" Hollie Wildsmith asks, surprised because you rarely get letters (your parents have tremendous trouble with the owl and thin patience).

In your good mood, you forget that a letter from home usually brings bad news, and joke with the rest of the girls about how it might be the muggle boy that works in the charity shop on the high street down the road from you.

You walk quickly out of the Great Hall with tears in your eyes, because your mother has written to tell you that she's leaving your father and that she understands you'll want to know why but there are some things that must stay between a husband and wife and God, but you know it's about the young next door neighbor with the babies and the husband who works away on the oil rigs for ten months a year.

Through your watery vision, you catch sight of Remus Lupin nudging Sirius Black and nodding in your direction. He turns his head to watch as you run out the hall and up the grand staircase to fling yourself down on your bed and pull the canopies around yourself and never come out.

Everything is blue.


	2. measure for measure

Christmas is hideous. Your mother cries every day and talks about your father with venom dripping from her mouth. You open two presents – one from her (a new dress for the Slug Club party at the end of term) and one from him ( _Merpeople: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Language and Customs_ ).

Your cousin Doc promises to let you be the first to ride his motorcycle – he's skint, he complains.

When your friends greet you at the platform, they bring tales of Yuletide - big juicy turkeys and brand new chess sets and lockets and rings passed down through generations of their _pure_ families.

* * *

You're walking to Ancient Runes, shrouded in a cloak of lilac under eyes and rounded shoulders (you don't want to speak to anyone, not even the four girls whose slow, steady breaths calm you at night), when Sirius catches up to you, smiling like a slaughterhouse, and pulls you away from your thoughts.

"You fancy my mate Moony, don't you?"

You look at him incredulously. "What?"

"Remus. You think he's beautiful." His grey eyes twinkle with delight and mischief and for once your stomach doesn't do backflips when he smiles at you.

"I don't feel like being teased today."

"What?" He jogs after you, looking confused. "Come on. I only want to know if it's worth it to get him to ask you to Hogsmeade."

"It's not." You say sharply, and leave him standing amongst the throng of third years playing exploding snap (you take fifty points from Gryffindor for that, just because you can).

* * *

Dinners at Hogwarts had always been comforting. Boats of thick gravy, mountains of Yorkshire puddings, knobs of butter and fresh bread and oozing chocolate cakes.

Now, everything tastes like mashed potatoes.

* * *

You walk past Professor Kettleburn's classroom one Sunday as you head back to the common room, and squeals and shattering and thumps and defeated cries of "Oh _shit_ " make you open the door and marvel at the destruction inside.

Sirius has let all of Kettleburn's little Puffskeins free from their cages and, by the looks of it, it was mating season.

Lots of tiny custard puffs begin to bounce around your Mary Jane's and Sirius is yelling as one hops up on his shoulder, long pink tongue lolling out to try and get a lick of his nose.

He looks up from his compromised position to see you there, textbooks underarm.

"I suppose you'll have to dock Gryffindor some points for this." He sounds rather hesitant, which is a first because nothing Sirius ever does is hesitant. He's rash and does things without thinking. Although he and James Potter are two peas in a pod, Potter always seems to be more thoughtful than his partner in crime. Maybe because he has more to lose.

He smiles sheepishly, caught red-handed, and cups the little ball of fluff and strokes it gently. You just look at him and laugh. _Properly_ laugh. For the first time since Christmas. And it's infectious because he's laughing now too, and tears are gathering at the corner of your eyes and he's clutching his side and the ball of fluff suddenly jumps from his hand to your shoulder and this makes you both laugh even more.

Then suddenly you're not laughing. The smiles melt and you're staring at each other and the air gets thick and warm and you're both leaning in towards each other and your textbooks drop to the ground with a dull thud.

"What is the meaning of this?" An authoritative voice demands.

You both jump apart like two children who've been caught doing something wicked.

* * *

You spend what's left of January reading the book that your father got you for Christmas. Thankfully, you don't feel like a traitor to your mother, and every night you dream that you're underwater with the merpeople, building pointy weapons from pretty seashells and learning to sing sweetly enough to kill a man. You wonder if there are any wizarding professions concerned with the study of merpeople, and you almost go to ask Professor Flitwick, your head of house, but you compliment him instead on his lecture on non-verbal spells because he'll probably assume you're mad for wishing to spend your whole life underwater with mermaids.

* * *

You sit with a gaggle of your friends in the mid-February breeze and pull grass from the ground until so much dirt is underneath your fingernails that it hurts.

They come over, the four of them, black cloaks swirling and red and gold ties undone. James Potter asks Issy Eastchurch if she's done the Charms homework, however, it's painfully obvious that he's really trying to find out if the Ravenclaw team have chosen their new Seeker. Remus looks a bit uncomfortable in front of so many people, so tries to blend into the trunk of a tree. Peter Pettigrew's beady eyes look at James and Sirius for some sort of cue on what to do, but they are preoccupied so he watches your blue and bronze friends as they play a game of gobstoppers.

Sirius sits next to you, and your breath hitches in your throat when you look at his lips, but he just greets you with a smile and lets you keep reading your merpeople book without bothering (even though you can tell by the bouncing of his leg he is bored and just wants to _move_ ).

* * *

" _ **TWO MUGGLES KILLED IN SOUTH LONDON – YOU KNOW WHO SUSPECTED**_."

The headline on the page burns your eyes and when you see Rosier and Parkinson and Flint laughing at the other side of the courtyard your anger overrides any sense of reason and your friends are helpless to stop as you march over and sucker punch Evan Rosier right in the face.

(Rumour has it that he has some kind of bizarre tattoo on his left forearm.)

"You dirty little mudblood!" He growls, and his friends whip out their wands and Severus Snape wears a disturbing smirk and you feel gentle arms pulling you away from the scuffle, but not before Rosier has managed to spit a wet glob of saliva in your face.

* * *

The headmaster's office is an odd collection of golden trinkets and moving portraits and books covered in Ancient Runes.

Dumbledore sits you down at his desk (you're still in shock) and explains to you that if you wanted to fight against anti-muggle prejudice, you would have to do so after you had turned eighteen and not in the Hogwarts courtyard. It shocks you a bit, but not really, that your headmaster is hinting towards the underground rebel groups.

"But sir," You argue. "You know his father is… is one of _them_. You know what he called me."

Dumbledore nods. "And I cannot expel Evan Rosier for who his parents are any more than I can expel you for who _your_ parents are."

* * *

Professor Flitwick doesn't take your blue prefect badge away.

 _Out of kindness_ , he explains, because he understands why you were so angry, but you should be a role model for the younger pupils, and that does not include brawling in the courtyard, apparently.

He does, however, look at you with disappointed eyes and Bill Davies looks down his nose at you, tutting, and your body shakes with a kind of foreign anger you've never felt before (not even when Rosier spat in your face).


	3. of courage

For the first day after the commotion in the courtyard, you embrace the anger and feel scandalous, like a wild thing, because it's not something you would usually do, solve a problem with your fist.

Your cousin Doc ruffles your hair and his mates congratulate you and you're back to the way things were before Christmas with your four dorm mates. The initial satisfaction is quickly replaced by shame and humiliation and embarrassment ("He actually _spat_ in her face").

Once you've swallowed your pride, however, you decide to visit Sirius in the hospital wing, where he's recovering from the nasty Instant Scalping Hex that Parkinson had flung his way.

You hurry past Madame Pomfrey, who tries to argue that he doesn't want any visitors and that he hasn't even let the Potter lad come to see him, and you stop before the only bed that has the curtains completely drawn, so he's hidden to the world.

It takes you a moment of asking yourself why you're even here in the first place, because you're not friends, not really, and you have a whole stack of homework waiting for you back in the Ravenclaw common room but eventually you grab hold of the white curtain and pull it back.

"Sirius?" You ask quietly, testing the waters.

You never can tell if he will be in a horrific, stormy mood or if he will be laughing and joking like nothing matters in the world. At this moment, it's a mild form of the later, even though his hair is growing back in ugly clumps, and he looks up at you and grins toothily (you suspect it's the medicine making him feel a bit loopy).

"Gorgeous, aren't I?"

You realise you're holding your breath and let it out in wispy laughter.

"I just came to check how you were." You explain, and before he interrupts to joke again, "I wanted to say I'm really sorry for what happened. Well, I'm not sorry for punching Rosier, and I never will be, I'm just sorry you felt like you had to jump in."

He sits up and looks at you indignantly. "Of course I had to." And for the first time, you realise why the Sorting Hat had _actually_ put him into Gryffindor, at the behest of his family.

Then, like a sort of armour, because maybe you had seen just a bit too much of him, he jokes, "I'd never miss a chance to duel a Slytherin. You don't know me very well do you?"

This makes you bite your lip but he's broken the awkwardness and makes you feel welcome, so you sit down on the edge of his hospital bed because there's much more you feel like you have to say (and you can feel his hand graze your thigh slightly, or is it just your imagination?)

"I don't suppose I do." You admit, and you mean it.

"Well, I don't know you very well either," He says, and you can tell it's going somewhere because of the pull of the corner of the right side of his mouth. "Because I can't very well work out why you didn't just hex him. Don't get me wrong – that punch was smashing, really. Amazing aim. But you're smart; why didn't you use your wand?"

It had never even occurred to you to use your wand. You shrug, "I was just so angry. When I saw that headline in the _Prophet_ and they were all laughing and he called me … _that_ once a few years ago… suddenly my fist was flying at him and I didn't really know what I was doing."

Sirius quirks an eyebrow. "I know how that feels."

The affirmation allows words to begin tumbling out of your mouth before you can cross check them, like you're eight again and confessing for your sins at the chapel.

"It felt better too. The satisfaction when I heard his jaw crunch. God, that sounds really morbid, doesn't it? But you're a beater, so I suppose you understand. I just mean sometimes the muggle way is better, isn't it? Gets the frustration out quicker. Magic just doesn't cut it sometimes. Although, it might have been good to show him that muggleborns can dole out hexes just as good as purebloods can. Perhaps I didn't make things any better and I actually just worsened it, as if I proved to him that we're base and low and can't use magic to deal with our prob-"

"You overthink things." He interrupts casually. You almost wonder if he gets tired of your rambling because he always cuts you off, but you're too busy staring into his grey eyes. "What you did was really brave. Really cool. Maybe you should have been a Gryffindor." He smirks.

Your heart starts beating at a mile a minute as you both lean in for the kiss.

* * *

The next time he gets into a fight, you watch from the stands as he punches the new Ravenclaw seeker in the face.

(You know you shouldn't cheer when Gryffindor wins, but you do anyway.)

* * *

You're in Hogsmeade with your cousin and he talking your ear off about Frank Longbottom, the head boy from when you were a fourth year, and the rebel group he and his fiancée have joined. He tells you that he only knows bits and pieces because of course it's all very top secret and owls can be intercepted. There's only so much Frank can write about in letters- he hasn't even told him the name of the organisation, but Doc reckons Dumbledore's in on it and you can't help but agree.

He hasn't bought any sweets from Honeydukes or asked you to help with an essay– so you find the whole reason for the trip and his obsession with Frank Longbottom rather odd.

You say so when you reach the castle gates and it makes him rub the back of his neck awkwardly, a habit he's had since he was ten.

"Well, I just… You see, the thing is… Frank has put my name down as a recruit."

The information doesn't process.

"But you're still in school, Doc."

"It'll be in a few months, once I've left. He says they need as many people as possible if they're going to win. I want to help them. It's what's right."

"It's downright bloody stupid and dangerous, is what is." You snap at him, and the anger you've been harvested for months bubbles over. "And selfish. You'll get yourself killed and your mum and dad will have to deal with the aftermath and You-Know-Who's lot will go after them too, just because they're muggles."

It was a very rare thing, to have two wizards in a non-magical family, but not impossible. When you were both young, it had made you and your cousin very close, sharing a world only the two of you could truly understand. Now, it seemed to make things much too complicated.

He storms away from you and towards the castle but you grab his arm before he can get too far.

" _Please_ just think about it, Doc. You're too young. You could _die_." You whisper the last word.

"Frank says we'll have to make sacrifices for what's right in the world." He's seething with rage, you can tell, and you don't think you've ever seen him as passionate about anything besides Quidditch before. He looks older. "I know it's dangerous, but the headlines in the _Prophet_ make me just as angry as you."

"Then leave it up to the Order. Let them make the sacrifices." The words escape your lips before you realise how cowardly they sound, and you wish you were brave and a Gryffindor like him and you had the guts to fight and fight and fight and not care who you left behind, but you just _can't_ and you never will.

"And you say I'm the selfish one." For the first time in your life, your cousin looks at you with disgust and pulls his arm away from your hand like it's a hot poker. "Take a look in the mirror."

He leaves you standing there feeling embarrassed and craven and all of a sudden you keel over and vomit onto the grass.

(Probably all the Chocolate Frogs you ate.)

* * *

A week later you stand in your dressing gown on top of the Astronomy Tower with your trunk in your hands. The air is crisp and nibbles on your cheeks to make them pink and the cold stone slabs feel like salvation beneath your tired feet.

 _The Dog Star is especially bright tonight_ , you notice.

You open up your trunk and let all your neatly folded clothes and saved letters from your parents and old photographs fly away into the night and it makes you feel free and unburdened for just a couple of moments.

* * *

Every day at breakfast and lunch you peruse " _Merpeople: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Language and Customs"_ over your boiled egg and three and a half tangerine segments and dollop of plain yoghurt. You've finished it five times by this point but each time is better and more interesting than the last. You even take it to the library, to read it instead of studying for Transfiguration like you know you ought to do.

"I'm going to become fluent in Mermish." You declare to your dorm mates one night, and they all laugh like it's the funniest joke they've ever heard, but you insist you're not joking and they share worried glances as if you're positively bonkers.

* * *

It's been two weeks and Sirius still hasn't spoken to you since he kissed you. He has, however, grown all of his messy dark hair back nicely.


End file.
